MEDICAL FORUM | Multidisciplinary medical teams are key in disaster sites

Susan Briggs

Harvard Medical School professor and surgeon Susan Briggs has been to major disaster sites over the years, including New Orleans after deadly hurricane Katrina, Haiti, the World Trade Center after the terrorist attacks, and the Boston Marathon bombing. “I learned lessons from all these disasters,” she stressed, adding that sending a multidisciplinary team is key.
Dr Briggs attended the Sino-Luso International Medical Forum (Series 23), chaired by the Macau University of Science and Technology’s Faculty of Health Sciences. The surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital conducted workshops on how to manage complex disasters in very different scenarios.
“The important thing is to have multidisciplinary teams so we can prepare for all hazards. We don’t know if we’re going to need [it] but we should have a team composed of different specialists with very flexible roles, so we can do whatever the disaster needs medically,” she told The Times.
Dr Briggs helped establish the first International Medical Surgical Response Team in the United States. Now the country has three. From her first disaster response experience in Armenia to Iran and Haiti, she acknowledges that there are indeed lessons to take away from every disaster.
Out in the field, it’s not only down to medicine. A good grasp of how to deal with cultural differences or politically hostile environments is also needed. Determining the most appropriate logistics for doctors to obtain supplies is another thought that often crosses their minds. Being prepared to deliver babies or perform C-sections is not out of the question either.
“Haiti [which was affected by a major earthquake in 2010] was one of the big challenges. It’s the poorest country in the western hemisphere; the lack of medical care was devastating to all people (…) it was a challenge because of the resources: we had a lot of things but they had nothing to follow up [after first aid],” she recalled.
One of her most moving experiences took place in rural Russia, when two trains filled with 600 people, including many children, exploded due to a gas leak. “We were deployed there to help, as were [nationals from] some other countries. When we got there, we had to modify a lot of things with our medical care,” Dr. Briggs recalled.
Villagers who provided first aid to children and other people on the trains invited the American team over and offered them a banquet. “They had never seen an American. We arrived in the middle of the Siberian forest, they greeted us and had prepared a banquet. We couldn’t speak the language and yet [it] was the most wonderful experience, we communicated with hugs.”
Dr Briggs acknowledged that this is why she works among disaster response teams: “To give back.”
Having started her career as a surgical nurse, she always knew surgery would be her future. As a surgeon for the past 40 years, Dr. Briggs stressed that they have to be willing to educate themselves constantly while working in disaster sites.
Although it is very different from other areas she has been to, Macau can adopt and work with a similar set of measures taken in other regions, regardless of the type of catastrophe it might face in the future.
“Disaster preparedness isn’t all hazards, it’s not preparing for a typhoon or an explosion. An example of that is we had the marathon bombing in our city [Boston] and we had been preparing for a mass casualty for 25 years with drills. We didn’t think it would be a bomb, we had a system for all hazards, whatever it was, and it worked as well,” she stressed.
She also advised Macau to develop different medical specialties, “as there’s a perception that only certain medical specialties are needed in a disaster, which is not true.”
Doctors from the Philippines – a nation often hit by typhoons – also attended the medical forum this past weekend to learn a new approach to medical response in disasters.
Dr. Tomas J. Monteverde recalled the deadly typhoon Haiyan. “We are happy to participate in the forum because the approach here is different. We have many typhoons every year and we were affected by typhoon Haiyan in November 2013. We were ready for typhoons but we underestimated its force,” he stressed, adding that they plan to share Dr. Briggs’ insights at a governmental level in the Philippines.
Ltc Abraham C. Bayan, group commander of the Armed Forces of the Philippines Reserve Command, also stressed that the “preparedness was there [but] we were overwhelmed by the magnitude of the storm.”
The Sino-Luso International Medical Forum (Series 23) kicked off on Saturday and ended yesterday. It examined the management of complex disasters while drawing on the lessons learned from the medical teams’ experiences.